Invited Speakers
Our distinguished invited speakers will lead off morning and afternoon sessions of the conference with a rich array of perspectives from the leading edge of the field.
Dr. Lisa Drake
Americas Manager for Marine Field Services & Monitoring at SGS
Topic:
Biofouling dynamics: ships, plastics, and management strategies
Bio:
Dr. Drake is the Americas Manager for Marine Field Services & Monitoring at SGS, the world’s leading testing, inspection, and certification company. Lisa and her colleagues on the global marine team develop new services and coordinate with 40 local affiliates to ensure that vessel owners, port operators, and coastal managers meet their compliance requirements (e.g., by sampling and analyzing ballast water) and decarbonization goals (e.g., by testing emissions of biofuels). She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from The Ohio State University and Master and PhD degrees in Oceanography from Old Dominion University. She has served as a Technical Advisor on various delegations to the IMO, as founder and Past President of the Society for the Study of Marine Bioinvasions, and as a member of the Women’s International Shipping and Trading Association (WISTA) International Environmental Committee and the Florida chapter.
Dr. Ross Cuthbert
Leverhulme Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast
Topic:
Bioinvasions and the Blue Economy: Navigating Economic and Ecological Balance
Bio:
Dr. Ross Cuthbert his a Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland). He is also a Research Associate at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity and a Member of the Young Academy Ireland. His research quantifies and predicts the impacts of biological invasions on ecosystems, economies, and health to improve management strategies. He also develops approaches to better understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of invasions and their impacts. He previously held Fellowships funded by the Leverhulme Trust (Queen’s University Belfast) and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel). He serves on the Editorial Boards of Marine Biology and NeoBiota.
Dr. Amy Freestone
Principal Investigator at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Topic:
Restoration and Remediation of Invasion-Impacted Ecosystems
Bio:
Dr. Amy Freestone is the Managing Director of the Marine Invasions Research Laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Supported by over 40 staff and facilities on both coasts of North America, research in the lab explores the patterns, processes, and consequences of invasions in marine ecosystems on local to global scales.
Amy’s research in particular bridges community ecology and macroecology to disentangle the drivers that shape natural communities in a changing world. Using experimental field approaches in benthic marine systems, she examines the impact of species interactions on community assembly and ecosystem function, particularly resistance to invasion by non-native species, and how these processes influence patterns of community structure and diversity in space and time.
One of her principal interests lies in understanding how these dynamics change across broad biogeographic gradients that define our biosphere, such as latitude. Therefore, her field studies span the subarctic to the tropics.
